


A Burden Laid Upon the Body

by ViaLethe



Category: Firefly
Genre: F/M, Plot What Plot/Porn Without Plot, Porn Battle
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-02
Updated: 2013-02-02
Packaged: 2017-11-27 21:48:32
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 614
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/666848
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ViaLethe/pseuds/ViaLethe
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She still has other people's blood on her hands when he takes her.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Burden Laid Upon the Body

**Author's Note:**

> Prompt words used were _fighting, whole_.

  
She still has other people's blood on her hands when he takes her, shoving her up against the wall in his bunk hard enough that she feels aches flaring in places that will bloom into bruises by morning, red and purple and tender, reminders of what she's done, what she _is_. 

“Stop thinking,” she says, more to herself than him, because his thoughts are bright and hot and concentrated on his hands, pulling her dress from her shoulders, pushing fabric down over skin, and she doesn't want him to stop thinking of that, not now, not ever.

“Ain't thinkin' on anything but you,” he promises, and his voice is rough, low in his throat, making her hands frantic to undress him, to feel his skin sweaty and slick against hers as they stumble towards the bed.

The words barely hold together in her mind, she's so distracted by the feel of him hard against her stomach, by the heat he's building between her legs, an ache that's sweeter and more demanding by far than her bruises, and she says it before they can escape, all in one quick rush of breath. “You like watching me fight.” She can see it all tangled together in his mind, pictures of her using her body as a weapon mingled with the _now_ , with his desire for a very different sort of dance.

“Only when you like doin' it.” He presses her down into the mattress, his hands folding over hers at either side of her head, and she lets him, just for now, lets him have the illusion of holding her, of controlling her in any way. Sometimes she thinks that's what this is really about, this dance between them; just hope for both of them that he can hold her back, that she can hold herself together.

When he kisses her it's hard and rough, and his teeth scrape over her bottom lip, tugging for a second, leaving her breathless and flushed, hanging halfway between harmony and the helpless urge, always there in the back of her brain, to split apart, to let River go and become someone else, someone without thought, without feeling.

It's easier to push it back when he's there with her, when she can wrap her legs around him and say his name, urging him on, urging him to push all the way inside of her. He keeps it slow at first, fucking her in long, even strokes, and for River, the world stills and slows, distilling itself down into the look in his eyes, locked on hers, and the building need at her core.

She can almost taste it when that heat bursts apart, a white hot tang in the back of her throat, like gunpowder, and again when Mal follows minutes later, bright and metallic like blood on her tongue.

“It's like you're almost a different person, when you're fightin',” he says later, into the silence broken only by their breathing, and she turns her head to look at him, past their hands still entwined between them. He has blood on his hands too, she notices, their skin stained just the same, and the thought binds her just as sure as he does, wraps the woman who is River more firmly into this body, with its bruises and tastes and satiated wants, and its need for _more_ , always more.

“I'm not,” she says. “All one in the end, witch and woman and weapon.” He'll believe it because she does, because they have to believe to make it true.

His fingers tighten on hers at that, and she watches some of the stain rub away, disappear into the friction between them.


End file.
